While in high school, Van Sciver did various art-related jobs, which included painting murals of Native Americans, drawing caricatures for mall customers, illustrating children's books, and airbrushing t-shirts.[1]

Van Sciver's first comics work was published in 1994, writing and drawing what he later called "a horrible little character called CyberFrog",[4] published by Hall of Heroes and later Harris Comics.[1][5]

His first work for DC Comics was in 1998,[5] which led to him being hired in 1999 as the artist on the series Impulse, with writer Todd Dezago.[5] This was followed in 2001 by the first of what would become several collaborations with writer Geoff Johns, on the superhero-horror one-shot The Flash: Iron Heights.[4]

Ethan Van Sciver drawing at Comicon fest, Athens, 2008

Van Sciver was hired by Marvel Comics in 2001 to work on New X-Men, a retitled and revamped series (beginning with #114) written by Grant Morrison.[5] The series' primary artist Frank Quitely was not expected to illustrate the necessary twelve issues per year, so Van Sciver was scheduled to illustrate two issues per year, which expanded to more issues as Igor Kordey was also hired as a semi-regular artist.[4] Van Sciver drew a total of four issues. In issue #133 of this series, Morrison and Van Sciver co-created the character Dust, a Sunni Muslimmutant who can transform into sand.[6]

Returning to work primarily for DC, Van Sciver worked with Johns on the six-issue miniseries Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004) which restored the Silver Age character Hal Jordan as the publisher's primary Green Lantern. They then worked together on an ongoing series featuring the character.[7] During this time Van Sciver was one of the artists who contributed to a series of instructional books for amateur comics artists, published by Wizard magazine.

No longer working for DC, in 2018 Van Sciver announced that he would instead produce his own comics, beginning with a crowdfunded comic entitled Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney featuring his early character CyberFrog, for which he raised over $500,000 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.[14] After the success of the campaign, Ethan announced his plans for establishing a publishing company called ALL CAPS Comics on September 17, 2018 that will house the title Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney.[15]

Van Sciver has been a central figure in Comicsgate, a controversial movement which has been described by detractors[16][17] as an online harassment campaign against people advocating for diversity in comics.[13][18] However, in November 2018 he claimed that he was leaving Comicsgate, though not for political reasons.[19]

^Marston, George (April 5, 2016). "Rebirth Brings Hal Back to the Green Lantern Corps". Newsarama. Archived from the original on April 20, 2016. Hal Jordan will be flying with a familiar co-pilot as recent Green Lantern writer Robert Venditti will continue to write his adventures in the new ongoing series Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. Also joining him is classic Green Lantern artist Ethan Van Sciver.